Ah, the sounds and sights of summer. Beach time. Grilling. Good friends and family. I was always looking for an excuse to bring my boombox somewhere when I was growing up, so that I could play my dubbed tape I worked weeks on. I had to wait for just that right moment when I knew the radio would be playing my song. It helped if I could break through the phone line to the station, to request it first.

Times have changed, boomboxes have shrunk to iPhones, and radio requests, well, it’s not as thrilling with streaming music. But the music and the feelings never changed. To honor the symbol of summer – the mix tape – I present to you a list of timeless classics, and new finds, to match any mood you might be experiencing this summer. And it’s just for guys. (And, no, I’m not serenading you).

These songs don’t fit the bill for you? I’ll post this on my blog, so head on over and add your favorites. (This was the best of my iTunes for summer, so it’s a limited stock). Or, check out Tom Moon’s 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die.

Here goes:

Pure Summer Fun:

• “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” – Lucinda Williams
• “Desert Island” – Magnetic Fields
• “Running on Empty” – Jackson Browne
• “I’d Run Away” – The Jayhawks
• “Honey” – Moby
• “Golden” – My Morning Jacket
• “Deadbeat Summer” – Neon Indian
• “I’m Getting Ready” – Patty Griffin
• “Statesboro Blues” – The Allman Brothers Band
• “My Girls” – Animal Collective
• “California Stars” – Billy Bragg and Wilco

Depressed:

• “Fade to Black” – Metallica
• “Comfortably Numb” – Pink Floyd
• “Sour Times” – Portishead
• “Manic Depression” – The Jimi Hendrix Experience
• “When The Stars Go Blue” – Ryan Adams
• “The Tracks of My Tears” – Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
• “Skinny Love” – Bon Iver

Happy:

• “My Favorite Things” – John Coltrane
• “Peaceful, Easy Feeling” – The Eagles
• “Feeling Alright” – Joe Cocker
• “Perfect Day” – Lou Reed
• “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” – Beach Boys
• “Joy” – Bettye Lavette

Testosterone/Adrenaline Jolt

• “Tom Sawyer” – Rush
• “I Got Stripes” – Johnny Cash
• “Communication Breakdown” – Led Zeppelin
• “Negative Creep” – Nirvana
• “Jesus Built My Hotrod” – Ministry
• “Anarchy in the U.K.” – Sex Pistols
• “Born Under a Bad Sign” – Albert King
• “Lust for Life” – Iggy Pop

Problem Relationship Songs:

• “Human Nature” – Michael Jackson
• “Cure for Pain” – Morphine
• “I’ve Got My Mojo Working” – Muddy Waters
• “Respect” – Otis Redding
• “This is Hell” – Elvis Costello
• “Love Hurts” – Gram Parsons
• “Trouble” – Ray LaMontagne
• “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” Wilco
• “Evil” – Howlin’ Wolf
• “Jealous Guy” – John Lennon
• “Dyslexic Heart” – Paul Westerberg

Good Relationship Songs:

• “Love Keep Us Together” – Martin Sexton
• “Sweet Caroline” – Neil Diamond
• “Lady” – Fela Kuti
• “You Make Loving Fun” – Fleetwood Mac
• “I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl” – Nina Simone
• “Love and Happiness” – Al Green
• “I Want You” – Bob Dylan

At Night:

• “Harvest Moon” – Neil Young
• “Pink Moon” – Nick Drake
• “Nightswimming” – R.E.M.
• “House of Cards” – Radiohead
• “Wild Night” – Van Morrison

It’s ubiquitous and it’s stressful. It seizes you and drains you. It leaves you longing for the good old college days, where responsibility was minimal and adult expectations hadn’t set in. We’re talking about time strain. Time, like money, is a finite resource. We only have so much of it, and what we do with it is totally up to us. Even when we think we’re enslaved to it, we’ve still made choices to absolve ourselves of it.

What to do? The crisis of not enough time is one that needs careful attention. As a psychotherapist, I help people take their time back, and uncover the things that keep them enslaved to time and their busy lives.

As Americans, we’ve gotten so much busier. No longer is the 40-hour workweek the standard. It’s more like 45, 55, and 70 hour workweeks for some. It’s become more difficult for many to make ends meet without two people earning a living, trying to provide childcare, and find time for themselves.

In some ways, the recession has allowed us to take a hard look at how we invest ourselves, our time and our money. Many Americans are choosing to spend less time working, and more time investing in the things they value, like their kids, family, travel, etc.

Let’s talk about six things you can do plug the time drain in your life, and to start to reel your schedule back in:

1. Identify what you really value: are your activities and actions aligning with the things you value in life? If not, it may be time to make an action plan to get those things to align (activities/behaviors and values). If you’re unhappy at work, is it reasonable to work less, or to look for something else entirely? What are the blocks to get your values to line up with your activities/behaviors?
2. 

   Booked Solid?

   Get time-organized: this one is a no brainer. If you’re seeping time, and don’t know where it’s going, maybe you can make yourself more accountable. Here’s some tools to help: designer David Seah produces these fine organization tools, where you can start to hold yourself accountable on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. Teux Deux is a sleek, no frills online to-do list. And Google had plenty of products, from online apps, a calendar, and other tools to get you organized. Also, TSheets tracks your time online, like expenditures, so you know how and when your time is being used. And you’ll be surprised how much time you’ve spent on YouTube once you start.

3. Read the previous post on saying “no” to commitments to others, and learn to have more free time and not feel guilty doing it.
4. Prioritize and carve out time for yourself, even if it’s only five or ten minutes a day to do some sitting meditation. Without time for yourself, you’re less likely to be effective to all the other demands of your day. You’re teaching yourself to be able to “input” as well as “output” to others, which is hard for many guys to do.
5. Ask for help! If you can’t handle everything, don’t be so proud that you don’t ask for help. No one cares, except you. Enlist others to help where you need it, and don’t be shy. People are more than happy to help, as long as you don’t take advantage of them.
6. And, make good time for sleep. Sleep is the great equalizer when you get it, and will undermine everything else if you don’t. Get your 6-8 hours of sleep a night (some people need more than others). When you prioritize sleep, as well as yourself (see tip 4), you’re creating a very effective foundation to be your most effective at juggling the myriad things/people/situations that will absorb your time, including work. Do this one above others. Get some good nightly sleep.

Follow these steps, and you’ll be able to experience more feelings of “centeredness” and less feelings of being scattered. You’ll be able to take back your life and time, rather than continue to feel like you’re catching up to it. Good luck, and let me know how it goes. E-mail me directly on the “Contact” page above.

Your email:

 

You’re a busy guy. You’ve got tons of responsibilities: work overload, family duties, chores and to-do lists, time with your wife or girlfriend, time with your kids, working out, having a beer with a buddy… the time commitments can be endless. Where does it end? When you can sit back and breathe, do you ever feel overwhelmed and like you’re burning the candle at both ends?

Stress has many components, and for guys who have a hard time saying “no” to others, it can seem much worse. I know. As a recovering “nice guy”, it was really hard for me in the past to say ‘no’ to others, when they would ask something of me. As I’d take on more and more commitments, I would overwhelm myself, and either generally not be of use to the people asking (by dragging my feet on something), or by generally internalizing a lot of anger at them, and at myself for not getting what I wanted.

If we can learn to say ‘no’, we take the power back that we’ve given others. Having expendable time in your life will be something you create consciously, instead of reactively (and through fear) making commitments to others when you don’t really want to.

I think we can’t say ‘no’ to commitments because we don’t want to let down the other person, because if we do, then they’re mad or disappointed in us, and who wants that? When we give others power over us, to overly praise or reject us, then our fate kind of lies in their hands. If we can learn to get ourselves to the point where it’s o.k. to to say ‘no’, and check it out with the other person if we need to (“I’m afraid if I say ‘no’ to you, I’d disappoint you. Did I?”). If we start seizing back the ‘no’ we mean to communicate, and state it with empathy and not anger, we’ll ultimately get a lot father in our lives.

Your email:

 

Meditation is an ideal practice one can apply in stress management, and has a host of other perks. Developing a regular meditation practice can reduce depression and anxiety levels, improve sleep functioning, and promote an overall sense of well-being and relaxation. Meditation improves the way we relate to ourselves, and others, as we can learn to experience and accept difficult thoughts and emotions that are inevitable functions of living.

Ronald Siegal, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, recently came to Phoenix to deliver a weekend mindfulness training, and he summed up mindfulness in this way: mindfulness connotes awareness, attention and remembering. Mindfulness includes non-judgment (of our feelings, thoughts or experiences), as well as acceptance.

There are many forms of meditation out there, and some traditions include visualization practices, among other things, but mindfulness meditation is different. When we practice mindfulness, we practice sitting with what arises in the present moment in our inner experience. We’re not changing anything, or pushing out any unwanted thoughts; we’re simply tuning into our immediate experience, which happens to include our thought stream, emotions and everything else that’s happening. It’s not a ‘touchy-feely’ as one might think, and you don’t have to be a Buddhist monk to meditate. Anyone can do it, and plenty of guys find this really helpful in reducing their stress.

The old adage, “what we resist, persists”, is applicable to how we sometimes ineffectively deal with our problems. When we sit in meditation, we can greatly reduce the experience of suffering by letting that ‘which persists’ just be as it is. In mindfulness meditation, we learn to sit with what “is”, or the thoughts, feelings and sensations that unfold from moment-to-moment in our inner experience.

This is different from how most of us live our lives: we often are hurried, mindless, and sometimes reactive to others. We sometimes live on auto-pilot, and forget that our behaviors and actions are the products of thoughts and feelings that drive them.

Here’s what to do when starting a mindfulness meditation practice:

1. Start simply: try sitting for five minutes at a time in a quiet spot, either in your office or outside
2. Get comfortable, in a chair or on a cushion.
3. Close your eyes, and start to settle into your body.
4. Start with bringing your attention to your breath: slowly inhale, and let go of your breath on the exhale
5. Bring attention to other parts of your body, including your shoulders, neck, heart, stomach. Notice the tiny sensations each of these parts of your body produces.
6. When your mind pulls you away from the breath, let it. The mind will do this many times in the course of one sitting, so part of meditation is to allowing it to do that, and to step back out of the thought stream to observe it. We’re not changing, avoiding, or pushing away any thoughts, good or bad.
7. Use your breath as your anchor. Keep coming back to your breath each time you become aware of a thought.
8. Try this for five minutes for the first couple of days, and keep going if you can. Don’t make this such a big deal: making it a chore will make you not want to do it.

And here’s what not to do:

1. Think of pretty images, like sunsets or unicorns, that are more visualizations.
2. Relax the need to push away uncomfortable thoughts or difficult feelings; be aware of how you push those away in your experience
3. Try to “do” anything. This isn’t a test or a race, and when you’re meditating, you’re not “doing it wrong”.
4. Avoid distracting sounds and environments.
5. Fall asleep
6. Get yourself so uncomfortable that meditating becomes too difficult.
7. Think you’re doing it “wrong”. You’re not. You’re just sitting with whatever comes up.

Meditation is liking riding a bike. It takes a little time and practice to get started, and when you do, you’ll notice the benefits quickly. You’ll develop more peace of mind, overall well-being and happiness from your mindfulness meditation practice.

Your email:

 

Guys tend to identify strongly with the work that they do. We’re taught that the work we do is who we are. When we meet people, at parties or at networking groups, the first question we usually ask is “What do you do?”

The notorious workaholics we know are usually guys. It’s a masculine-themed issue in our culture. We’ve become a society that has seen a standard workweek increase from 40-hours a week to 50 and 60 or more. What happened to us? Isn’t there more to us? Fortunately, the recession – although devastating in any number of ways – has given us an opportunity to get back to basics, and invest in those people and experiences that bring value to our lives, aside for just work.

Work is a strong source of self-esteem for men,  and provides us with different identities. When work is good, we see ourselves as a breadwinner to our families and children (or pets), a successful son or husband, and powerful. When it’s not so good, or we’re laid off or drifting between jobs, we might experience shame, powerlessness or “poverty mentality”.

Let’s put our eggs in a couple of different baskets, shall we? Good investors learn to diversify, to spread their investments among their portfolio for balance. I propose the same for developing better work/life balance. If work tips too far to one side of the scales in your life, maybe work on developing other, equally important parts of your life.

1. Do I manage my work stress effectively? What could be different?
2. Do I have the support systems I need (e.g. friends, family, hobbies)? If not, how do I boost them up?
3. Does my work affect other parts of my life, like my relationship or marriage?
4. Do I tend to overidentify with my job or career? Does it affect other relationships?

Learning to deal with stress is an important component, en route to better work-life balance. Here’s a free stress management worksheet for you to better assess and change your stress: http://phoenixmenscounseling.com/clinicalforms/stress-inventory.pdf.

In relationships – intimate or otherwise – your single greatest weapon for success is communication. We have so much power in our hands with good communication, and we don’t even know it.

So many relationships end, or fade out, because communication sours or stops. Family members stop talking because of some ancient grudge from some relative’s wedding way back when. Marriages end because of issues that could have been worked out with clearer communication. Work relationships fail because we didn’t quiet mean to say what we said to our boss, and in our fiery impulsivity, leads to us getting fired.

We get in our own way when we communicate ineffectively. If we’re failing to state our needs and feelings, then we’re probably not getting what we want. If we’re not listening to what the other says, including when they have a problem with us, we’re ensuring a problematic conversation. If we’re not in touch with what we want, they others will have no clue about how to meet our needs.

For men, shutting down their anger is a universal issue every guy seems to deal with. Some guys explode; other guys stuff it in. Ineffectively dealing with anger is big time related to poor communication. A lot of guys are afraid of their own anger, or are afraid if they communicate it to the person they’re upset with, that person will reject them (e.g. their wife/girlfriend). Some guys are so busy people pleasing, that they would rather take care of other people’s needs instead of take care of their own. Over time, this builds up lots of anger, and it’ll come out in harmful ways.

The other thing on anger: it’s o.k. to be angry and communicate it. If you’re angry, it doesn’t mean you’re “that” guy, the jerk no one wants to be around. Being angry once doesn’t mean it becomes your identity. This is an important difference. Too many guys get afraid of being “that guy”, and stuff their anger further.

Here’s the skinny on what works and doesn’t work in good communication:

What works?

• Learning how to state your needs and feelings directly (first with yourself)
• Being open to your feelings
• Communicating your anger directly, not passively; don’t hold it in – it’ll corrode you
• Listen, and really hear what the other person is saying
• Get in touch with what you want from the person, and request it instead of demand it from them

And what doesn’t work?

• Criticizing others; they’ll shut down – guaranteed
• Judging others
• Acting superior to others
• Making demands upon others
• Using “always” and “never” with others
• Rehashing history with someone, and using it as ammo against them
• Passive-aggressive behavior (like saying “I’m not mad at you,” but acting mad at them in other ways)

I’m reminded of Al Bundy, patriarch of the Bundy family, from the TV show “ Married With Children.” In the show, Al’s proudest moment in life was scoring four touchdowns in one game. He didn’t achieve what he sought out to, and, long story short, ends up working as a shoe salesman. Al often spends time attempting to recapture his glory days, but usually trips himself up with bad decisions and worse judgment. Al blames and resents his family, and attributes his problems to them, which provides the crux of the show’s humor.

Al’s life ended up very differently than he planned. In high school, he shined. it was a successful football player but hopes of getting a college scholarship, but after he impregnated his girlfriend and broke his leg, everything changed. Al lives in his private world filled with the best times of his life, and it’s a place that’s too many men resort to living in when their realities prove disappointing and unfulfilling.

As men (or people in general), we have a tendency to avoid ourselves, our situations or our lives as they are in the present moment. Often times, we’re too busy living in and out our private universes of the past or of the future. We hold on to the good memories, often to escape the reality of our current situation.

We may have been star athletes, president of the debate squad, or more successful with women in the past. We may have felt happier at a time in the past where we were more secure, fitter, healthier, happier, and generally more equipped to deal with the world.

Through the process of stagnation, those experience wane over time. Maybe our lives didn’t end up the way we planned. Maybe our spouses didn’t bring us the happiness that we so hoped. Maybe our children disappoint us, or maybe we disappoint ourselves. Maybe we didn’t make a million dollars, or become a pilot or a deep sea diver like we planned when we were 8 years old.

Life is short, and it’s never too late to turn it around. So what can you do?

• Admit that you’re stuck/angry/unhappy, to yourself, your spouse, your pet iguana, whomever
• Take some time for contemplation, and start to understand if you are living in an alternative universe, where your past self (or a happy future self) take up most of your headspace.
• Get help. Seek out professional help to allow you to deal with the blocks that prevent your happiness in the here and now.
• If you’re victimizing (read: blaming others for your miseries or failures), stop doing that right now. Think of Al Bundy when you do, and realize that you help keep yourself in a cycle of avoidance and unconsciousness when you do. It may be easier to place the blame on others (your wife, your boss, your pet iguana), and it’s a hell of a lot harder to look in the mirror and take ownership for your pain, disappointment and anger at yourself.
• Understand that as long as you have a skinsuit, and fresh air to breath, you can make a change for yourself. It may be scary, and it may not be what others want of you, but it’s your life, and you choose happiness or unhappiness.
• Life is neutral. You are the decider. You can choose to work on issues and change them, or you choose to sit back and stagnate. They’re all choices. One choice is to not choose.

(reprinted from January’s edition of “Mentality” for men)

Being the social beings that they are, women are generally more predisposed than men to seek out the support of their close friends when there are problems or challenges. Women are better at seeking out friends, and knowing how to support themselves by doing it.

On the other hand, men are not wired this way. Guys in our culture tend to have more superficial relationships, based on common interests, hobbies, work and sport. Men do have “guys’ night”, but usually entails some male bonding activity through watching sports or playing poker. Men bond with activities outside of their emotions, and our culture has never been supportive of men relating to other men in any other way, especially emotionally.  Look at the abundance of “bromance” movies in the last couple of years, such as “I Love You, Man.” Culture, or more specifically, Hollywood, usually needs a comedic vehicle in which to introduce the idea of men connecting on an emotional level. It’s just too “weird” or “uncomfortable” without the humor. It’s kind of sad, because a lot of guys have nowhere else to turn for support.

On a practical level, many men do state that they want more male friendships. They often don’t know how to go about getting them, or aren’t willing to put the work in to maintain friendships. Again, this is where women do it better than guys. They can not only seek out social support from friends, and learn how to meet their needs in this way, but have the ability to maintain friendships and invest the time and energy than it takes to keep them going.

The older a guy gets, the harder it is to “teach a dog new tricks.” It just becomes “too hard” for a lot of guys to risk seeking out new friendships, and spending the time and energy that it takes to preserve them. Sometimes it’s just a little scary to reach out.

We say to ourselves that we want more friendships, but sometimes we aren’t willing to put the work in that relationships take. Friendships are similar to intimate relationships or marriages in that way: they’re good when you put the work, time and investment into them, and atrophy when there’s no investment. Even if you just “synch” with someone, you still got to put the work in to maintain friendships.

Fear is one way that we get stuck from advancing towards generating an up keeping friendships. Sometimes, fear prevents us from taking the risk of seeking out new male friendships or reigniting old ones. Laziness is also a common roadblock towards developing friendships. We don’t want to put the work in, or “have other things to do,” which is another way to say that we are prioritizing certain things in our lives over developing more room for personal friendships. It’s just one choice over the next choice.

Friendships don’t just come to us; they take a lot of work, energy investment, and mutual willingness. it’s the same as keeping a marriage healthy, and it’s a way of helping keep yourself healthy by learning to meet your needs as a man. Guys need the support just like women do, and friendships are a great way to get that support when they’re mutually satisfying.

If we’re honest with ourselves, sometimes the very act of making New Year’s resolutions cause the very stress they’re trying to reduce. Trying to commit to a workout schedule, or any other schedule, sometimes sets us up for failure when we burn through the initial motivating stage and land into the same stuck place we started from.

Learning how to lower the stress in our lives – and not add to it with unsuccessful New Year’s resolutions – is the goal for more successful stress management.

Taking goals step by step, and successful planning, are keys to minimizing resolutions-based stress. Being realistic about your goals (practicing what’s feasible) will help succesful achievement of your New Year’s goals. Knowing that maybe a fine six-pack might look great, but how attainable is that, considering the real day-today stressors you deal with in you life?

Great planning goes a long way in goal setting stress management. Knowing what resources you’ll need is key: time, money, support, psychic investment, etc. Being prepared for the steep hike helps when you’ve got all the gear you’ll need when the inevitable speed bumps (or road blocks) appear, including waning motivation levels.

Scheduling is another key to stress-free New Year’s resolution planning. Knowing exactly when, and how often, you’ll be advancing towards your goals is critical. Mapping out the time blocks on the calendar you use most, whether that’s your phone or physical calendar on your fridge, is helpful to knowing how to best use your time to achieve your new goals.

Finally, practice patience and compassion with yourself. Watch your aggravating self-critic trying to undermine your efforts and shoot you down. Remember: the path is also the goal. Most goals are successfully learned and practiced over the course of time, so try to see yourself advancing through the process, not specifically towards goal attainment. It’s the path that’s important to remember, and it’s less likely you’ll quit along the road if you can focus there a little more.

Your email:

 

Why do men in pain hold it in up until the last minute, and then seek out help when the damage has been done? Are men naturally predisposed to pain aversion? What would happen if men were to more proactively seek out mental health counseling or therapy before an otherwise manageable problem ended up destroying them?

Men are beings not socialized to seek out resources and social support the way women do. Women can seek out the comfort and support of friends and family, whereas men tend to hide and obscure their pain in private. A lot of this has to do with the stigmatization of what it means to be a man in our culture. Men are taught, from an early age on, that “real men don’t cry”, and to stuff our emotions and shift into mastery or accomplishment mode to overcome adversity and get things done in the world.

The effect is that problems fester and grow, like mushrooms growing in the dark and dampness of a dead tree. Without light, these problems will get larger, be they marriage problems, work-related issues or general mental health issues.

Depression has many causes, but it gets exacerbated by this effect. Depression can be treated by medications and/or therapy or counseling, but many men succumb to “suffering in silence” and don’t seek it out until facets of their life start to crack at the foundations. They choose to seek pain alleviation when things are bad, and possibly irreparable.

Seeking out a professional counselor for help, and stepping out of denial and stigmatization, are huge tasks for men to do. Often, it’s the bulk of the work just getting there to want help. Seeking out that help proactively is critical in learning the skills needed to learn to help oneself, so that life can get easier, relationships better, and quality of life can be improved.

Your email: